The spiritual practice we are focusing on this month is forgiveness. As I began to pray about this, I wondered how I was going to talk about forgiveness and food. It was during our Living the Five Agreements group when I realized that what had helped me stop overeating and eating compulsively was when I began forgiving myself and others.
I, like so many others, have tried just about every diet imaginable. For the longest time I thought about dieting as it related to food and how much I ate. When I thought about forgiveness, I thought about other people. I had never thought about forgiveness and food. In my mind, forgiveness was what I ate, not what I had a relationship with.
However, food is not only something we have a relationship with, but it is also in so many ways tied to our relationships with others. So many of our habits and traditions are linked to our relationships with others and often times anchored in traditions associated with food. As long as we are not able to or willing to change our habits and traditions, then our relationships with others and with food stay the same. While maintaining positive relationships with others and with food is encouraged; it is not until we forgive the past hurts in relationships with others and with food that we can move forward.
Forgiveness addresses how we think and feel about ourselves and others and, how those thoughts manifest within our life force or energy. It eliminates what we have put into our minds about who we are; who others are and, the subsequent issues or upsets that grow from the thoughts and the emotions attached to the thoughts. Creating a loving, healthy and fulfilling life and relationship begins in the mind. When we forgive, we give ourselves the freedom to move beyond the past and no longer focus on what have or have not done. What others have or have not done to us, what we have eaten or not eaten.
As we forgive ourselves, we eliminate toxins and wounds from the past which have been embedded in our mind and soul. We free ourselves and allow ourselves to engage in new ways of thinking, being and living. As we practice forgiveness, we free ourselves to create loving and healthier relationship with others and with what we eat.
Forgiveness allows us to live in the moment, not in the past. It changes the way we experience every aspect of our lives and allows us to kick our addictions to past hurts and abuses. Forgiveness allows us to set ourselves and others free to grow and evolve. As we do, we lose the weight of guilt, shame, negativity, lack, and doubt, and build muscles of faith, love, and endurance.
This week, may we all practice infusing forgiveness into our diets and reducing our habit and addiction to a high guilt, high shame diet.